Straw criticised for shaking Mugabe's hand LONDON
(Reuters) - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has been criticised for shaking
hands with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whom he has previously
accused of human rights abuses.

Straw was caught by a BBC camera
shaking hands with the Zimbabwean leader last week at the United Nations in
New York, a move which the Conservative party described as a "scandalous
betrayal" of the people of Zimbabwe.

Straw defended his actions
by saying it had been too dark to recognise Mugabe.

"I had not
expected to see President Mugabe there," he was quoted by newspapers as
saying.

"Because it was quite dark in the corner, I was being
pushed towards shaking hands with somebody just as a matter of courtesy, and
then it transpired it was President Mugabe."

London has led a
campaign for Commonwealth sanctions against Mugabe over his controversial
redistribution of white-owned farms to landless blacks and a 2002
re-election in polls international observers said were gravely
flawed.

"It is a scandalous betrayal of the men and women of
Zimbabwe who are suffering at the hands of Mugabe's blood-stained regime,"
the Conservative shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram was quoted in the
Daily Express as saying.

Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe won
independence from Britain 24 years ago, has repeatedly accused London of
trying to oust him.

Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw has defended shaking hands with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe and
saying "nice to see you" when they met in New York.

The scene was filmed as part of a Newsnight feature following Mr Straw's trip
to the United Nations.

Mr Straw said the serious disagreement between the two countries did not
justify being "discourteous or rude".

But he made it clear he had not immediately recognised the much-criticised
Zimbabwean president.

Good manners

Talking to BBC correspondent Martha Kearney, Mr Straw said: "I hadn't
expected to see President Mugabe there," referring to a lunchtime reception
hosted by South African President Tabo Mbeki.

"I was sort of being pushed towards shaking hands with somebody as a matter
of courtesy, and then it transpired it was President Mugabe," he added.

"But the fact that there is serious disagreement between Zimbabwe and the UK
does not mean we should be discourteous or rude."

Shortly before the reception, in an address to the UN General Assembly, the
Zimbabwean president accused US President George W Bush of behaving like God,
and Tony Blair of being his prophet.

He said the US and the UK were "raining bombs and hell-fire on innocent
Iraqis, purportedly in the name of democracy".

"We are now being coerced to accept and believe that a new
political-cum-religious doctrine has arisen, namely that there is but one
political God, George W Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet."

'A new man'

But Mr Straw was in a meeting with Russian diplomats at the time, and was not
aware of Mr Mugabe's virulent speech when he met him at the reception, the
Panorama report explained.

Zimbabwe last year quit the Commonwealth after the country was suspended
indefinitely from the body over human rights abuses.

Mr Mugabe accuses the UK of trying to oust him because of the land
redistribution programme his regime is carrying out by confiscating white-owned
land and giving it to black Zimbabweans.

Before the controversial encounter with Mr Mugabe, Mr Straw was complimented
on his new looks by Mr Mbeki, who noticed the foreign secretary had a new
hairstyle and was no longer wearing glasses, and called him "a new man".

But Mr Straw later told the programme he had simply gone back to using
contact lenses as he did when he first became a member of parliament.

Asked on whether the public should not read political ambition into his
makeover, he laughed and said: "No, the ambition is there anyway."

`What we say here," President Alejandro Toledo of Peru advised
at the United Nations last week, "needs to be connected to the real
world."

Spare a moment's sympathy for Toledo. He won his presidency three
years ago on a platform that promised an end to Peru's endemic corruption.
Now the corruption allegations swirling around his office - though fiercely
denied - have got some pundits calling him "Latin America's least popular
president."

But he seemed oblivious to that as he joined the annual fall
parade of leaders addressing the U.N. General Assembly. On the theory that
the best defence is a good offence, he used a press conference to appeal for
international support for Peru's efforts to extradite his predecessor
Alberto Fujimori from Japan to face corruption charges at home.

And
that's when he made his intriguing point that national leaders who are given
the privilege of the extraordinary U.N. podium need to set an example to the
world in their own conduct.

If only we could believe they were
listening.

This year's gathering offered a stark glimpse of the real
divide in the world today. Not the ones portrayed in the headlines, such as
the rifts over terrorism policy, or between much of the world and President
George Bush.

It's between those who respect laws - or value legal
obligations - and those who don't.

Bush is easy to criticize -
obviously many have - for a foreign policy doctrine that runs roughshod over
the concepts of multilateralism, which underpins the U.N. and its efforts to
break new ground in international law.

We're not talking about Iraq here,
but about, for instance, the International Criminal Court or improving the
Biological Weapons Convention, both of which Washington has
opposed.

Okay, but what about those other leaders who also used the
podium to lecture the world on righteousness, while ignoring their domestic
sins?

Best example of that last week was Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's
president, whose regime is condemned around the world for harassing
opposition parties, intimidating the press and using violence to undermine
democracy.

Did Mugabe bother to acknowledge that? Not a
chance.

Instead, he got a smattering of unparliamentary applause for his
tirade against Washington and its allies for pursuing a "new
political-cum-religious doctrine" in which "there is but one political god,
George W. Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet."

Great line, but no
one laughed at the next one, in which he called the U.N. Charter "the most
sacred document and proponent of relations of our nations."

That's
the same document whose preamble commits member states "to reaffirm faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in
the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and
small."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan tried to bring the debate
down to reality. He was widely quoted for his apparent criticism of the U.S.
venture in Iraq, noting "every nation that proclaims the rule of law at home
must respect it abroad."

Less widely noted was his second line: "And
every nation that insists on it abroad must enforce it at home."

The
General Assembly debates are a yearly ritual of international diplomacy. And
the ritual requires everyone to listen politely, if they listen at
all.

These speeches, after all, are largely aimed at impressing an
audience at home with the leader's ability to rub shoulders with powerful
states and, if necessary, tell them off.

Brazil's President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva railed against the "powerful and all-encompassing
cogwheel" that runs the world system. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez condemned the
"unjust, exploitative and unsustainable world economic order."

But it
would be nice if leaders understood - as Toledo said - that even the most
stirring rhetoric has to be measured against actions.

South Africa's
Thabo Mbeki put his finger on the problem. "Every year many of us ... make
an annual pilgrimage to this great and vibrant city to plead the cause of
the poor of the world, hopeful that this time our voices will be heard," he
said in his address.

"Every year, after a few days, we pick up our bags
to return to the reality of our societies, whose squalor stands out in sharp
contrast to the splendour of New York."

He's right, but the solution
to the growing global gap between rhetoric and "reality" doesn't always lie
in concentrating on the world's dark geopolitical forces.

It has a
lot to do with setting an example of good, responsible, and honest
government at home.

More than
half of Harare's three million residents are either chronically short of
water or without any at all just days before the start of the hottest month
of the year.

Hardest hit are the poorest residents, many of whom now also
have to endure raw sewage running past their homes in what was once one of
Africa's most orderly cities.

President Robert Mugabe's
administration is facing allegations of incompetence as dams feeding the
city, although polluted by untreated sewage, are full. The Zimbabwean
capital has also run out of foreign currency to buy chemicals to treat its
water.

Psychology Chiwanga, the director of works at the Harare
Municipality said last week that water would be rationed and the government
would spend £4 million to revamp the water works' infrastructure, which has
crumbled away since independence in 1980.

But people in the high
density suburbs have taken the law into their own hands. "People dug a hole
in the municipality's pipe under the ground, and we take the water from
there. If we don't we will die," said Masimba Chayemba, 17, in Mabvuku
township, 12 miles south-east of Harare.

The pipe is a main artery
alongside the road linking Mabvuku to richer areas to the north of the
city.

It is buried about six feet underground, and yesterday water was
gushing to the surface.

Many residents took water away by the
bucketful to irrigate their vegetable plots.

Other people, mainly
women, many with infants strapped to their backs, were digging in open
fields near a dam, hoping to secure a more legal form of water
supply.

Elias Mudzuri, Harare's former opposition party mayor and the
only qualified water engineer in the capital, began to fix some of the
infrastructure after he was elected in 2002. He was then arrested, beaten up
and removed by the government after a year in office .

"Next month
will be terrible because it is the hottest time of the year," he said. "When
the rains come in November, there will be cholera because much of the
sewerage system is broken."

BULAWAYO - The Zimbabwe Republic
Police is running re-orientation courses in which officers are taught about
the ill- treatment of blacks by whites including the killing by British
settlers of Zimbabwe's 19th century spirit medium, Nehanda, ZimOnline has
established.

Sources said the courses, which are being conducted at
police Provincial Updating Centres dotted across the country, were meant to
prepare the law enforcement agency for the crucial general election
scheduled for March next year.

All officers from the rank of
inspector down to constable - the lowest rank in the police - were required
to attend the one-week training course in groups of 20 at a time. The
courses have been going on for more than three months now, according to some
police officers in Bulawayo, who have already been through the re-education
programme.

"Each officer must attend for all the seven days. If you
fail to attend for whatever reason, you are charged first and then ordered
to do the course," said one constable, who did not want to be named for fear
of victimisation. He added: "Our bosses are telling us that if we do not
undergo the training we will not go for election duties."

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena refused to discuss the matter when
contacted by phone from Johannesburg.

Some of the police
officers, who spoke to our news team described the re-orientation courses as
highly political and apparently meant to drive a wedge between the police
and anyone who did not support the ruling ZANU PF party and
government.

They said senior police officers who are running the
courses were emphasising the need for "all police personnel to have nothing
to do with enemies of Zimbabwe who include among them all members of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party and former white
commercial farmers."

Other topics include the colonisation of
Zimbabwe by Cecil John Rhodes on behalf of the British monarchy in the late
19th century and the seizure of black-owned land by the
colonists.

The trainees are also taught about the government's land
reforms meant to restore land to blacks and "economic sabotage by Britain
and her Western allies opposed to the government's land redistribution
programme."

Besides the killing of Nehanda, who was hanged by the
colonial administration after leading the country's first armed uprising
against foreign rule, the police officers are also taught about the hanging
of Kaguvi, who worked together with Nehanda.

"The killing of
blacks by whites included the hanging of Kaguvi and Nehanda. We are also
taught about the deaths in 2002 of (ZANU PF activists) Limukani Luphahla in
Lupane district and Cain Nkala in Bulawayo," said one police
officer.

The government blamed the kidnapping and subsequent murder
of Nkala and Lupahla on the MDC. The High Court has since acquitted six MDC
activists accused of murdering Nkala because there was no evidence linking
them to the crime. Lupahla's murder is still unresolved.

Another police officer, who has had his stint at one of the training
centres, described how the trainees began each morning with rigorous
physical exercises carried out while singing Chimurenga (revolutionary)
songs.

He said: "In the mornings we would start with physical
exercises which we did while singing revolutionary songs such as Nora, (a
song written by ZANU PF political commissar, Elliot Manyika) before doing
foot and arms drills."

The opposition MDC, human rights groups
and churches have in the past accused the police of applying state security
laws selectively to punish perceived opponents of the
government.

They have also accused the police and other state
security agents of committing human rights abuses against perceived
opposition supporters. The government and its security forces deny the
charges. - ZimOnline

Police caught napping as protesters take to the streets
against draft lawTue 28 September 2004

HARARE - About 100
members of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) yesterday demonstrated
outside Parliament against a government draft law that will restrict
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the country.

The assembly
is a coalition of churches, labour, opposition political parties, students,
human rights and civic bodies campaigning for a new and democratic
constitution for Zimbabwe.

Three weeks ago the police thwarted
demonstrations by the assembly against the proposed NGO law, which the
government is expected to enact when Parliament resumes next
month.

But yesterday assembly demonstrators appeared to have caught
the police by surprise, pitching up at Parliament without first notifying
the police as is required under state security laws.

Under the
government's Public Order and Security Act, Zimbabweans must first seek
permission from the police before gathering to discuss politics or carrying
out public demonstrations.

Yesterday, the police only arrived at
the Parliament building more than 30 minutes after the demonstrators had
dispersed.

Assembly spokeswoman Jessie Majome said: "We have been
notifying them (the police) but we end up getting a raw deal. Instead of the
police taking note of the notice we would have given them, they interpret
the notice as an application and then deny us our right to
demonstrate."

Attempts to get clarification from the police on
whether they were going to charge the assembly for not notifying the
authorities as required by law were not successful yesterday.

Meanwhile, a group of women walking from Bulawayo to Harare - a distance of
440 kilometres - in protest against the NGO Bill had by yesterday afternoon
arrived in Chegutu town, less than 100 kilometres from the
capital.

The women all of them members of the Women of Zimbabwe
Arise group started marching on Sunday last week.

They plan to
stage a demonstration at Parliament urging legislators to block the
controversial Bill.

Leader of the women's group, Jenny Williams,
said: "We are saying Zimbabweans must ensure that the Bill does not sail
through in Parliament. The Bill is meant to bite the hand that feeds (the
country). NGOs have done a marvelous job for the community in the field of
humanitarian aid, human rights, HIV/AIDS and others."

The
proposed new law will see the setting up of a NGO council to register civic
bodies in the country. NGOs will be banned from providing voter education
while those wishing to undertake human rights work will be barred from
receiving foreign funding. - ZimOnline

England's cricketers were subjected to "emotional blackmail" by
the ECB and its chief executive Tim Lamb to persuade them to play in
Zimbabwe during the 2003 World Cup, despite the squad's "overwhelmingly
moral" objections, the then captain Nasser Hussain claims.Hussain says
he felt abandoned by the British government and the ICC as well as the ECB
as he grappled with life-and-death political issues which he felt
ill-equipped to deal with as a professional sportsman. In an extract from
his autobiography, Playing With Fire, he adds: "It was without doubt the
most traumatic time of my life."

After the England players had voted
15-0 against playing a pool match in Zimbabwe, Hussain claims Lamb "tried
every trick - at one point he broke down and cried in front of me" in an
attempt to change minds.

Please
send any material for publication in the Open Letter Forum tojustice@telco.co.zw with "For Open Letter
Forum" in the subject
line.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------JAG
OLF
298---------------------------------------------------------------------------THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by
mankind."

Rudyard
Kipling_____________________________________________

OPEN LETTER
FORUM

Letter 1. Subject: Stamped

G'Morning

Postage rates
up again from the 1st! Well someone obviously taught the Menin Mercs that
when revenues go down, the answer is to double the prices.Now lets have some
sense of reality. If a USDollar is 5620, then a stampat zwd 4600 is almost
80usc. This does not compute! Can someone let usknow what posting a local
letter will cost in the States.

Some years ago the Chinese built us a
lovely new post office. Fifteentills, and round the corner a parcel
section, always busy, and wads ofletters in my postbox every time I called.
Well my staff no longer writehome, nor does home write back. I used to buy
stamps by the sheet, andpost my payments. I no longer have accounts,
because nobody trusts anybodyanymore, the utilities hand deliver their
bills, and the few magazines I dostill get must be collected from the
depot.

The theory that more expensive stamps will cover the costs just
will notwash. Those chaps that used to strike and bring the country to a
halt willstrike for higher wages, and nobody will even know. At the Fair
yesterdaythe ladies selling Christmas cards had a very quiet day.

Oh,
and the brave new post office has leased out most of the building, andthey
have one quiet little corner, with two little men sitting in twolittle
tills, and the people who sort the post live in their dungeon inblissful
peace.

Ann______________________________________________

Letter
2. Subject: Open Letter Forum

Dear Jag,

The comments of the
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment andTourism, Margaret
Sanganwe, regarding Air Zimbabwe's safety in the airwhich was published
today, 25th Sept, cannot go unnoticed as safety ofpassengers is paramount
and this is a priority to be resolved - but to saythat Zimbabweans are not a
'holidaying' culture baffles me, becauseeveryone knows the reason why
average Zimbabweans cannot go to Vic Fallsand addendum and spend a night or
two at the A'Zambezi Lodge and similar -because they cannot afford it (we
certainly could not when we lived in Zim,and that was already going back to
the early 90's). Now we live abroad forobvious reasons, have been here for
less than a year and have alreadymanaged to go to Europe - I wonder why?! -
surprise, surprise - becausemoney in this part of the world has some value
and goes a long way. It'sabout time government officials start treating the
general Zimbabweanpublic with some respect, after all we are not that dense
to see what isgoing on.

Johanna
SchermulyUK_______________________________________________

Letter
3. Subject: AGM

Best wishes to JAG and its members, and congratulations
on doing a good andnecessary job

Simon
Dakin_______________________________________________

Letter 4.
Subject: Trying to find Keith Kirkman

Hi JAG

My daughter who is
now an Industrial Organisation Psychologist inWellington New Zealand, has
met up with the Kirkman family and they aretrying to trace Keith Kirkman who
originally was of Donnington Farms P OBox 27 Norton.

The Kirkman
family in New Zealand have asked my daughter to try to locatethis side of
the family and I thought maybe you could help or put me in theright
direction, please.

Perhaps the best address to reply to would be to my
daughter Miss CelineCarlisle at hrhceline@hotmail.com as I fly out to NZ
this Sunday and willmeet up with the Kirkmans on their farm over there
during the course of thenext five weeks.

PLEASE PRINT THIS PETITION, COLLECT
SIGNATURES AND THEN POST IT TO BOX 67,MARONDERA. ALL PETITION FORMS WILL BE
DELIVERED TO TEL-ONE.

* NB - in view of announced increase in local
postage on 1 October to $4600, if you fill this by 30 Sept you can save
money on postage!

We, the undersigned wish to voice our concern at the
unjustified andastronomical telephone charge increases introduced by
Tel-One. The unitcharges have been increased overnight from $120 to $585, a
five-foldincrease. This is justified neither by the current rate of
inflation nor animprovement in the quality of service provided. It would
appear that theseincreases are the result of either pure greed or
incompetence. It is likelythat several businesses will not be able to
sustain such unrealisticincreases and will have to close down. At a time
when the Governor of theReserve Bank is trying, quite successfully, to
control inflation inZimbabwe, the latest measure is tantamount to economic
sabotage. Thesetelephone charge increases will doubtlessly have a 'domino'
effect on allbusinesses, like fuel price increases do, and you can expect
othercharges/fees/rates and subscriptions to increase in order to off-set
these!

NAME ADDRESSSIGNATURE
DATE---------------------------------------------------------------------------All
letters published on the open Letter Forum are the views and opinionsof the
submitters, and do not represent the official viewpoint of Justicefor
Agriculture.---------------------------------------------------------------------------